The Day I Went on an Adventure

Unfortunately, all schools across Burkina are suspended until further notice. This, seeing as how teaching is my main job, left me with a lot of time on my hands. I graded over 300 papers, wrote 2 new tests, worked on my grant application, read a biography of John Lennon, and created a new recipe of rice and tuna burgers… and it was only Monday. Shit. This left with me a lot of empty time.

On Tuesday, I was feeling rather ambitious, or maybe I was just bored, so I decided to go on a bike ride. Seeing as how I am the most unathletic person ever, I figured I would take a nice, easy bike ride. I started pedaling out of town. I was pedaling, and then I started to get really tired and hot. I told myself I would ride for at least 30 minutes out of town, so I looked at my watch to see how long I was going, and to my great disappointment, it was only a whopping 4 minutes. Despite my laziness telling me to turn around immediately and go sit in front of my fan, I kept going. I made it up the big hill and was now cruising smoothly towards Mali. I kept going and impressed myself when I reached a small town 15 kilometers outside of my town. 15 kilometers! The furthest I ever rode my bike was around my neighborhood block, and that left me sweating and huffing afterwards. And now, I biked 15 kilometers. This is when I realized, I had to bike back. Crap. To my amazement, I made it home in one piece. Then, I took a nap. Haha.

On Wednesday, I woke up feeling like I got hit by a bus. My abs were hurting, my legs were sore, my back was aching. Shit, even my neck muscles hurt. And to top it off, I was sunburned. I decided this day I would definitely take an easy, which is when I received a text message from my neighbor saying he was in town for the day. Great, now I have to entertain someone when all I really want to do is sleep. And, I definitely do not want to get on my bike again. I met him after he finished some errands, then we met up with my site mate, Ben, to get some yogurt. This is when they decided they wanted to go on an adventure. I live in Africa, so “going on an adventure” could mean just about anything. I insisted I was not coming, but they weren’t having that and next thing I knew, I’m at my house filling up my water bottle, lacing up my sneakers and putting on sunscreen. Then, I had to get back on my bike. Ugh. Every part of my body screamed “NO!”, but I did it anyway. Little did I know at that moment, that that adventure would turn out to be one of the funnest days I’ve had here in a while.

Ben said he knows a great route we can follow that follows the river and leads “en brousse” (AKA to the middle of nowhere). We follow our faithful leader and 20 minutes later, we were back at Ben’s house. “Woops, I think I took a wrong turn somewhere.” At this point, I really wanted to go back to my house, but we tried again with Ben insisting, this time, he knew the right way. We headed back into “no man’s land”, where we were biking on small dirt paths where rivers once ran. We kept biking for about 25 minutes when we come into an area I didn’t even know existed. A forest. But not just any forest. A huge, tropical forest that looks like it came out of a scene from a Vietnam movie. We were surrounded by the most beautiful flowers, biggest trees and most colorful birds I have ever seen. Shit, where am I? Oh yea, I’m in Africa. It’s amazing how you can get swept up in life and forget about your surroundings. Forget where you are, and forget, quite literally, to stop and smell the flowers.

I’ll probably never be invited on another one of their adventures again because I couldn’t bike up the river ravine or across the moguls, and I kept making them stop to take pictures of me haha. But, hell, I had fun and I had an adventure. (As if living in Burkina Faso isn’t adventurous enough.)